Showing events on this day in years past that shaped history... just, not our history.

Friday, March 13, 2015

May 4, 1970 - Students Fight National Guard at Kent State

On
April 30, 1970, President Richard Nixon announced a new campaign into
Cambodia as the latest strategy to overcome the Viet Cong who had
been operating outside of the recognized combat areas. The war in
Vietnam had already dragged on for years, and, rather than seeing
this as a clever move of aggression to end the war according to
Nixon’s Madman Policy, the American public feared that it was
reigniting a fire that had been dying. College students were
especially among those upset as the exemptions that had protected
them from the draft had changed in 1969.

Protests
at Kent State University in Ohio began the next day. Initially, it
was a peaceful demonstration with a ceremonial burying of the
Constitution, which protestors felt had died in the face of
administrative action. Students went back to class as the day went
on, but that Friday night the protest turned violent. What began with
a bonfire and a few tossed beer bottles exploded after police
responded to a shattered bank window. Bars were ordered closed early,
which only turned out more people to join the mob. Police eventually
broke up the riot with tear gas.

Over
the coming days, threats and outbursts washed over the town, centered
on the university campus. City officials appealed to Governor Jim
Rhodes, who called out the National Guard to restore security. Rather
than judging the violence as a symptom of overall unrest, Rhodes
announced that the activity was spurred by a few who “move from one
campus to the other and terrorize the community. They're worse than
the brown shirts and the communist element and also the night riders
and the vigilantes.” He threatened to obtain orders to end
demonstrations and declare martial law.

Rather
than quelling the protestors, Rhodes’s speech prompted a sit-in
that Sunday night. Soldiers carried out orders to disperse the
students, stabbing a few with bayonets when they did not comply with
the newly instated curfew. Two thousand students attended a noon
protest. When a policeman attempted to read them the order to
disperse, he was driven away by shouts and rocks. The National Guard
soon arrived with bayonets fixed.

The
push by the Guard drove the students out of the Commons. Students
fled out of their way but regrouped as the soldiers returned. They
threw more rocks and returned tear gas canisters. Suddenly
surrounded, the guardsmen acted erratically and aimed their guns.
According to later court cases, the soldiers were fired upon by a
sniper. Other witnesses said that it was the guardsmen who fired
first: sixty-seven shots that left four students dead and nine
injured.

Faculty
raced to appeal for a sense of calm after the tragedy, but students
began a counterattack with Professor of Geology Glenn Frank being hit
in the face by a thrown empty gas canister. Students with improvised
weapons like bats and trashcans assaulted the soldiers, who resumed
shooting while attempting to retreat. Arsonists soon started fires in
buildings around the Commons, and the riot spread. More National
Guard stormed into the area, at last securing it with over
seventy-eight dead and countless wounded.

The
events of Kent State proved contagious. A student strike swept the
nation, shutting down campuses and sponsored more shootings and
stabbings. National media fed the frenzy with powerful images of
fallen students, yet polls showed the average Americans either blamed
the students themselves or held no opinion; only eleven percent
blamed the government. Counter-demonstrations, such as the Hard Hat
Riot in New York City, only contributed to the violence.

One
hundred thousand protestors marched on Washington, where their
leaders were met by President Richard Nixon. Nixon held similar views
to Governor Rhodes that the instigators were only a few
communist-agent “bums” acting against the “silent majority,”
who supported the war in Vietnam. As the riots settled, Nixon called
for a President's Commission on Campus Unrest, which investigated.

For
further investigation (and to avoid future violence), Nixon put into
effect the Huston Plan. It was a comprehensive outline of actions by
the FBI, CIA, DIA, and NSA that would secure the authority of Nixon’s
administration. J. Edgar Hoover, who had begun his career battling
gangsters through PR, initially argued against the plan, but he caved
seeing how much damage had been done to Kent State, which closed
permanently soon after the riots. Under White House aide Tom Charles
Huston’s plan, the agencies performed wiretaps, burglaries,
mail-seizure, and even firebombs on a list of enemies as they rooted
out campus leaders. Political prisoners were shipped to a
specially-built facility in the West.

The
usefulness of the Huston Plan was evident when investigative
journalists could prove no connection between a break-in at the
Watergate Hotel and the White House, embarrassment said to have ended
their careers. Afterward, it proved capable of even choosing elected
officials. California Governor Ronald Reagan was politically
destroyed after an intensive IRS investigation when he challenged
Spiro Agnew before the Republican primary in 1976. Later that year,
the character of the Democratic candidate, Georgia Governor Jimmy
Carter, was devastated in a scandal involving prostitutes.
Republicans continued in office until the 1990s, when the Democrat
Bill Clinton proved able to have any scandal slide off his back.
Under new leadership, he “cleaned house” in many of the agencies
responsible, causing an intelligence overhaul that would later be
blamed as opening the country up to terrorism.

--

In
reality, the faculty successfully intervened. Prof. Glenn Frank gave
a twenty-minute appeal, stating, “If you don't disperse right now,
they're going to move in, and it can only be a slaughter.” Students
were convinced and left the Commons. For many Americans, Kent State
stands to this day as a warning of government overreach, as does the
resignation of President Nixon in 1974 following the Watergate
Scandal.